Snowdrops and Oldhands – Czech Coal Chess Match 2012

Oldhands on the throne again

[18.12.2012 00:00:00] - Legendary grandmasters, with the average age of 70 years (and that is without 90 year´s old Yuri Averbakh), demonstrated a beutiful prosecuting ride in Poděbrady. They showed to young Snowdrops, what does it mean to fight and to fight as a team. This year they won the match 17 : 15 and all the spa town applauded them.

Snowdrops were winning by 5 points after first three rounds and it seemed that this year the match will be an offensive just in one direction. Moreover, everybody expected that with a passing time, Oldhands´ breath will get shorter. But the legends played every day better and better. They just had a slow start. Before the last round, the state was equalized - 14 : 14.

When the two Snowdrops with a higher rating finished by a quick draw in the last round, the moment of the final stroke came. The other two Snowdrops had to raise the hat to their adversaries that managed to win the games finally - Fridrik Olafsson and Wolfgang Uhlmann. By the way, the game of Kashlinskaya – Uhlmann from the last round was appreciated as the most beautiful game of the match (you can watch it here), the multiple German champion played it like young Michail Tal.

From the individual performances, we have to mention also Tania Sachdev, who won 6 points from 8 games with ELO performance 2624 points. Oldhands won, but the Indian women grandmaster escaped to all of them.

Russian grandmaster and the actual women champion of Europe, Valentina Gunina, received the award of fair-play. One example for the others - she gave a notice to grandmaster Vlastimil Hort when he forgot to squeeze the clock, and so the fairness and respect, that she proved to the chess legends have to be estimated.

Results, games, photogalery.

| Pavel Matocha | visits(3281x)